John Dramani Mahama has said that although the comments made by his National Chairman over the NDC’s unreadiness to sign a peace pact is not a decision arrived by the party leadership at a deliberation, he supports it.
According to Mahama, signing a peace pact and allowing people to indulge in violence and go unpunished does not consolidate the peace the country is enjoying.
He explains the need to go beyond putting signatures on a piece of paper to ensure there is peace, rather than thinking the signatures themselves will bring peace.
In an engagement with residents in the Volta regional capital Friday, Ho, he cited the Techiman incident in 2020 where 8 persons were killed but no culprit has been punished yet or any compensation given to the bereaved.
“I read a statement made by our Chairman this morning and even though it is not a decision that we have sat and taken, I can understand the position he is coming from. He is talking about justice and saying that we should not glorify just signing a peace pact without acting to make sure that peace exist because when we sign a peace pact and people gun down 8 of our compatriots and nobody cares, no investigation is done, no compensation is given, then what was the use of signing the peace pact?
“And so, I can understand where he is coming from but of course we haven’t sat and taken a definite decision on that but I do think that those who normally clamour about signing pact, and then we think that just by signing that paper everything is going to be okay, he is telling them that everything will not be okay unless we go farther than just the signature on the peace pact,” he explained.
Background
Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the National Chairman of the NDC, during a programme on JoyNews Wednesday, August 14, 2024, expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of peace declarations, maintaining his outfit is not going to be a part of such declarations this year.
This, he said, was due to the ineffectiveness of past experiences. “Signing a peace declaration doesn’t mean anything to the party, as previous pacts have not yielded any real results.”
According to him, the real deal in violence prevention is proactivity and not symbolic gestures. He said whether a declaration is signed or not, if violence is allowed to brew, it is bound to happen.
“If you allow violence to brew, it will happen whether you sign a declaration or not. That’s why, more than a year ago, I started talking about the need to remove the building blocks for a violent election,” he explained.
Mr. Asiedu Nketia urged stakeholders to address the root causes of the violence that sometimes mar the political processes rather than waiting for them to spiral out of control before focusing on peace pacts.
“At any stage when something is happening, I call on those who, in the future, will call us to sign a declaration to speak up and stop it from happening.
“Otherwise, if you let these issues build up and then say, ‘Let’s play a peace football match, sign a declaration, and hope for a peaceful election,’ it won’t work. We did all this and more in 2020,” he said.
Citing the 2020 elections for instance, the NDC National Chair stated that despite the actions taken by the National Peace Council and Council of State, the process was still marred by violence.
“Signing or not signing is not the issue. What we need to address are the building blocks that lead to violence,” he insisted.
Meanwhile, the NPP is asking the NDC to reconsider its decision.
NPP appeals to NDC to reconsider decision not to sign peace pact ahead of December 07 polls
